Chapter 26
COLE
Kate and I go straight from the airfield to the garage that is serving as Sawgrass’ command center.
I’m not sure how many uniformed men crowd the four-car space.
A blue tarp stretches across the concrete floor.
In the center of the tarp, Jeremy Collins is secured to an armchair I’ve never seen before.
A shop light is clipped to a rafter, pouring harsh white light over the scene.
Duct tape binds Collins’ ankles and wrists to the chair.
His feet are bare. His chest too. Someone has worked him over multiple times; his bruises range from yellow-green to deep purple-black.
His eyes are swollen nearly shut, and his mouth is a rotting piece of fruit.
It’s not clear if he’s passed out or if he’s merely asleep. Pliers rest on top of a car battery at the edge of the tarp. The room stinks of piss and shit.
Sawyer Best stands in front of the chair. He’s the only Sawgrass man not in uniform. But even in a dark navy suit and an open-neck white shirt, he’s the one who looks most like a general.
“Sorry,” I say to everyone. “We got caught in a ground delay at Teterboro.”
Best nods. “Fucking summer monsoons.” He looks from me to Kate. “You sure you both want to be here?”
I can only guess how much it costs her to keep her voice rock solid as she says, “Fucking positive.”
Best smirks and says, “Understood.”
I wasted an hour arguing with Kate on the flight down from New York, telling her she’s still recovering, that she needs to get her sleep, that I’ll relay Best’s full report once we’re done. But she countered every one of my arguments with, “Collins was working for Tarasov.”
I know when I’ve lost.
So now she’s standing firm in a slim, black business suit, her white shirt crisp against the tangled fire of her hair.
I had the clothes delivered to the Plaza this morning from Gallagher Samson, the same boutique where she got her wedding dress.
I hope the hotel incinerates the outfit she left behind.
“Okay,” Best says. “Let’s get started.”
A bucket of water sits near Collins’ feet. Best slings it with an easy motion, soaking the restrained man’s face.
Collins splutters as he rouses. It takes him a moment to focus on Best, but when he does, he starts to babble. “Sir. There’s been a misunderstanding. I’ve tried to explain… They won’t listen to me. It isn’t true, what they’re saying.”
“Easy, son,” Best says, settling a hand on his shoulder.
Kate stiffens beside me. She doesn’t want anyone showing compassion to the lying sack of shit who got Tarasov into that club.
I shift my weight until our sleeves barely touch.
I won’t embarrass her by taking her hand or folding my arm around her waist. She’s strong enough to face whatever is about to happen.
Best glances at Jacobson and nods toward the tarp. A folding chair materializes from somewhere. Best straddles it, leaning his forearms over the arched metal back. “Okay, let’s start at the beginning. Walk me through everything so I can be certain I understand. Can you do that?”
Collins gapes as if he’s just accepted Best as his personal savior. He sounds eager when he answers, like he wants a gold star. “Yes, sir!”
Best waits.
Collins says, “The beginning. I came to Sawgrass right out of the Navy. Six years ago, this September.”
Best says, “We don’t have to go that far back. Tell me about when you were posted to Baltimore.”
“It was the Bukowski job. Watching that warehouse down at the docks.”
“Tough assignment.”
“We never should have lost Rodriguez.”
“You were out for what, fifteen weeks, rehabbing that shattered femur?”
Kate leans closer as Collins nods, her jaw set. She doesn’t want to feel sorry for Jeremy Collins. She only wants to make him pay. I recognize her expression because it’s the same as mine.
Collins says, “Short-term disability. Sixty percent of my salary.”
Best prompts: “And you had other expenses.”
Another nod.
“Tell me about that,” Best says.
Collins sighs. “Sports bets. Fucking Ravens. They were supposed to go all the way.”
Kate smothers some sound at the back of her throat. The Canton Crew ran betting parlors across half of Baltimore in the days before gambling was legal. She knows exactly what a football team can cost a betting man.
“How much did you lose?” Best asks.
“Online? About eighty.”
“Eighty thousand dollars. While you were on disability. Sixty percent of your salary. What about not online?”
“Sir?”
“How much did you lose in person?”
“I played some poker trying to make up the difference.”
Kate makes another strangled sound. I wonder how much money Barry Lynch made over the years from executive poker games. I’m willing to bet Kate could tell me, to the last red-hot cent.
Best pushes Collins. “How much total?”
“Two hundred and fifty grand.”
Best doesn’t react. “Then what happened?”
Collins starts to cry without making a sound. The tears just squeeze out of the swollen flesh around his eyes, dripping from his chin onto his bruised chest. I’m surprised by how badly I want to throttle him.
But Best leans forward over the back of his chair. He rests his left hand on Collins’ head, like a priest delivering absolution. The stump of his missing pinky looks stretched and white in the harsh light. “What happened, son?” he asks.
Collins’ mouth works, but no sound comes out. He swallows noisily. His lips quiver. Finally, he says, “The bratva said they’d make a deal.”
Kate turns to marble beside me. I wonder if she’s thinking what I am—how differently things might have gone if Collins had turned to the Irish mob instead of the Russians.
Best asks, “What sort of deal?”
“I didn’t have to pay them back the money. Instead, I could give them information.”
“Information?”
“Stupid shit at first. The license plate for my Sawgrass car. They could have gotten that at DMV.”
“What else?”
“How many men we deployed on jobs. Who was scheduled on which shifts. When we made new hires.”
“What else?”
“They wanted to know about that goddamn bitch.”
The admission, when he finally gets to it, is shocking. Best has lulled all of us, rocking from question to answer and back again, without a hint of emotion. Collins unhinged rage sounds obscene.
I glance at Kate. Her face remains perfectly smooth, but her fist clenches at her side.
“You’re referring to Ms. Lynch?” Best asks, almost like he’s a lawyer in a crowded courtroom.
“Fucking cunt,” Collins sneers.
Best lashes out, his fist connecting hard with Collins’ solar plexus. The bound man almost tips over his chair before he slumps against his duct tape. His belly rises and falls as he gasps for breath.
Not one of the Sawgrass men moves.
Kate blinks.
“Our client,” Best corrects, his voice perfectly even. “Ms. Lynch.”
It takes Collins a minute, but he finally gets his words back. “And him.” His chin juts toward me. “Tarasov especially wanted to know about him. He paid extra for information.”
“Anything special?” Best asks mildly.
Collins is back to trying to please Best. He wants to follow the rules. He wants to make everything right. “Nothing important,” he says. “Where he traveled. When.” He swallows hard, then whines, “No one was supposed to get hurt.”
“Did you tell him when Mr. Wolf returned home after Independence Day?”
Collins nods.
“I’ll need you to say that out loud, son.”
“Yes.”
“Did you tell him about Mr. Wolf’s trip to Idaho?”
There’s a long pause, but Collins finally says, “Yes.”
“Did you tell him about Ms. Lynch visiting her grandmother across the street, prior to the teargas attack?”
Collins delays his answer, as if doing so can change the past. But he has to say, “Yes.”
“Did you tell Tarasov about Mr. Wolf and Ms. Lynch traveling to New York?”
We wait even longer, but Collins eventually manages to whisper, “Yes.”
“Did you tell them specifically where Mr. Wolf and Ms. Lynch would be? At Kynk?”
Collins slumps in his chair, eyes closed, chest rising and falling rapidly.
Best leans in. “We’re almost finished, son. Did you tell them Mr. Wolf and Ms. Lynch would be at Kynk?”
Collins sobs.
Kate is waiting. I’m waiting. Best is waiting. One of the uniformed men snorts in disgust. Someone else mutters, “Fucking pussy.”
Best shakes his head with a mild frown, moving even closer to his disgraced man. “Son?”
Collins says, “I thought Tarasov would just call. Maybe scare them a little, the way he had before. I never thought he’d show up there himself. I didn’t know he’d go inside. I had no way of knowing he’d make the cunt—”
Best’s fist darts between Collins legs. He punches first, then grabs a handful and twists.
Collins’ scream is louder than I thought he could manage. Kate’s eyes narrow as a dark stain spreads over the man’s crotch.
Collins finally forces out a whisper. “That’s what he called her.”
Best says, “I understand.” He rises from his chair.
“Wh— What are you going to do to me?”
“What I should do is hand you back to Seal Team Six. I’d love to find out how they would treat a man willing to sell out his brothers. His friends. His clients.”
“Yes,” Collins says, shot full of new energy. For the first time in days, he glimpses an escape hatch. “Send me to them,” he begs. “Let me explain. I’ll tell them everything. They can decide what to do with me.”
Best says, “That’s what I should do. But you’ve already taken too much of my fucking time.”
He reaches under his jacket and comes out with a sleek black pistol. He shoves the muzzle against Collins’ ear and fires.
The noise is deafening in the confines of the garage. I jump in surprise. Kate lets loose a single word, something in Irish, but I can guess at the meaning. The spray of brains and blood stops just short of the edge of the tarp.
Best drops his hand to his side. “Clean up this mess,” he says to Jacobson. And he gestures to Kate to lead the way out of the garage.